LAFAYETTE, Ind. – So much for any conspiracy theories about the nails hanging empty across from the U.S. Postal Service windows at the Charles A. Halleck Federal Building in downtown Lafayette.

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the spot on the wall for presidential portraits have remained empty.

The explanation was simple enough, according to Patricia Gonzalez, property manager for the Halleck Building, a General Services Administration property.

“It’s not an oversight,” Gonzalez said Monday. “We’ve yet to receive them. If you go to other GSA federal buildings, they don’t have them, either. … I’m in Hammond, Indiana, as well, and we don’t have them, either.”

That changed Tuesday morning, when the White House released official portraits to Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, nine months after the administration began.

The delay has been a matter of speculation in Washington circles, as GSA property managers waited for portraits, a traditional feature in federal buildings and agencies.

According to a Washington Post account, Barack Obama’s portrait was up by the third month he was in office in 2009. It took until June 1993 to get the official portrait of Bill Clinton, according to The Associated Press.

In the Halleck Building, the two nails pounded, one higher than the other, into the wall above a desk with postage scale and change of address forms come with a back story.

In 2013, customers found clipped letterhead and sticky notes from anti-Obama campaigns, essentially calling for impeachment, tucked into the corner of the 11-by-14 picture frame and, at times, right in the middle of Obama’s face. Once removed, the scraps of paper and sticky notes returned over the course of several weeks.

After a J&C story, GSA property managers called the silent protest “tampering with public property.” They weren’t able to determine who had been posting the messages on Obama’s picture.

To solve the issue, property managers hammered a new nail into the wall, about 18 inches higher, so Obama’s portrait was essentially out of reach. The original nail stayed where it was, holding nothing.

“Nothing like that happening this time,” Gonzalez said of the empty spots on the wall for the past nine months.

A release from the White House said the portraits will be available for sale to the public, as well. The White House did not release a timetable for when they would be available.